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ANALTECH — Yes, really. They're "the logical choice thin-layer chromatography."
BIMBO Bakeries — Theoretically, it's supposed to be pronounced "beembo." Um, yeah, whatever. P.S. Now sponsoring the Philadelphia Union soccer team!
BJ's — Say I'm unnecessarily sexualizing this if you must, but I refuse to believe that the big box wholesale club is the first place folks go in their mind when they hear talk of "BJs."
BOLUS (Freight Systems) — 1. a rounded mass, as a) a large pill b) a soft mass of chewed food. 2. a dose of a substance (as a drug) that is administered intravenously. I often see their semis on the highway, and wonder each time why these people chose an obscure medical term (clearly not a family name) for their trucking business.
BONOBOS — Naming a men's clothing company after the notoriously-hypersexual chimpanzees might be a good idea. Something tells me not, but, uh, maybe that's what they're going for.
BUNGHOLE LIQUORS — Yes, I know what the technical definition of a bunghole is. But really?
DEATH WISH PIANO MOVERS — Tongue-in-cheek, obviously. If you're going to go all in with a name like this, you damn well better be the absolute best at what you do. Maybe they are, maybe they're not (I haven't had occasion to use them, despite their proximity), but they seem to be doing OK for the moment.
...as opposed to, say, TNT freight — I'm not even sure what the TNT actually stands for, but when one work vendor insisted on using them instead of FedEx or UPS, we used to refer to them (accurately, I should add) as "Tomorrow, Not Today."
FLUKE Corporation — OK, so Fluke is the founder's last name. But actually using said name is about as brilliant as former New Hampshire politician Dick Swett or former NASCAR driver Dick Trickle not opting for either "Rich" or "Rick" as a nickname.
MAINE OXY — Sadly, as it happens, Maine leads the nation – by far – in the percentage of residents being treated for addiction to painkillers. Like, you know, Oxy.
NOVARTIS — Fancy-pants, bajillion dollar, multinational pharmaceutical company, yes. But with a name that sounds as funny/awkwardly clinical as the 100+ year old mouthwash that coined the term "halitosis." Mmm...
ORIFICE RECYCLING & REFUSE — With their bright pink recycling carts, you can "roll breast cancer to the curb." OK, so their hearts are in the right place. But, well, their heads are up their business name.
PHARTRONICS Engineering — Find them in Oklahoma City! [Insert your own phart joke here.]
SCHWING America — This concrete pump manufacturer couldn't have known when they started up back in the mid-'70s that the phenomenon of Wayne's World would make them a household word/joke by the mid-'90s.
Which, of course, leads us to...
WANG Laboratories — They've been defunct for 15 years, but no list like this would be complete without mentioning the once-giant Wang.
Best worst-named company? The hands-down winner ...
SOFA KING — Sofa king good because it's sofa king funny.
With production delayed for the next season of Mad Men, and the long, hot, bloody-humid summer still buffeting us with occasional thunderstorms of our own sweat, here's a 100-calorie snack post on which you can slake your thirst.
Ten phrases that will never be spoken on Mad Men:
Brief apologies for the lighter fare of late, but work has been up in my business like the ladies from The View on Bill O'Reilly, and well, there's been quite a bit of shoveling to do.
After successive Facebook posts recently of "BK is slow roasting the tenderloin" and "BK is stirring the risotto," I got to thinking about the unintentional euphemism. Which is to say, non-euphemisms that can't help but sound like they are in fact hinting at something far worse than they are. Which is to say, high schoolish masturbation (which, I should add, a friend likes to refer to as "shaking hands with the unemployed") and/or unspeakable sexual deviance.
And so, sophomoric obsessive as I am, I started in to the brainstorming and the listing, while my wife looked at me like she hadn't the slightest inkling as early as 10 years ago what she was getting into.
But I digress. Herewith, the best non-euphemisms:
Note: Yes, if I was a true geek, I would have created a random word generator that simply used the [verb] + [article] + [food] construction.
OK, OK, maybe simply calling attention to a certain phrase raises suspicion about it. (It's a favorite pastime of my friend Spider to slyly append any sentence with "so to speak" [think Michael Scott's "that's what she said"] to make the utterly innocuous sound, well, nocuous. As in, "I could go for Chinese food tonight. So to speak." or "I need to take the car to my mechanic. So to speak.")
Or, as the old joke goes:
A therapist pulls out a bunch of inkblots. He shows his patient the first one and asks, "What do you see?" The patient replies, simply, "Sex." He shows the patient a second inkblot and asks, "What do you see in this one?" The patient again replies, "Sex." The therapist shows his patient a third inkblot and again asks, "What do you see?" Again, "Sex."
The doctor says, "Young man, I think you have a problem with sex." To which the patient replies, "Well, you're the one showing me all the dirty pictures!"
But enough excuses. The human mind is a filthy thing. So tell me, what phrases have I neglected?
It's that shopping time of year, folks. So I am again doing my public service for the publishing industry, and running through some more of my top fives lists. No new releases here (call me crusty, but hey, I'm on Twitter), but plenty good reading — or re-reading, as the case may be.
Buy 'em where you buy books.
Category of Its Own
The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948–1985, by James Baldwin — If I could read only one book for the rest of my life, I would choose this. No question. An outstanding collection of essays so good and so smart it hardly seems fair. Endlessly thought-provoking. And yet even that absolute, yet seemingly glib, description can't help but undersell one of the best writers ever to touch a typewriter.
Top 5 Books for Required Reading (think of it as one of those Facebook memes)
1984, by George Orwell — For several years, I taught this to college students. Some of them got it, some of them didn't. But I didn't really care, because I love this book, and I love it more each time I read it. And the world we live in causes me to recall it more often than perhaps any other book.
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee — Ditto.
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky — I first read this the winter after graduating from college, and just flat out dug it. Cold, dark, claustrophobic, and the only thing close to its level of skill in this genre may be Capote's In Cold Blood.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald — The end is fucking Shakespeare; gets me every time:
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
A Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger — I loved it from the moment I read it. And on that first reading, I glossed over the whole framing of the story, didn't get the whole cause for telling the story, anything. All I knew then was that Holden Caulfield was a fuck-up, and he was my hero.
Top 5 Books on The Nam (a minor obsession of mine, this genre)
We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young: Ia Drang — The Battle That Changed The War In Vietnam, by Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway — Forget the movie; Mel Gibson is a racist, misogynist wanker. This look at the then-new "air cavalry" is one of the most in-depth battle books you'll find. And a completely engrossing read.
The 13th Valley, by John M. DelVecchio — A long book whose note-perfect world I missed immediately upon finishing. The feeling and language of Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.
Dispatches, by Michael Herr — The best straight-ahead reporting to come out of the war.
The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien — O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone... and Going After Cacciato are also well worth a read, but those earlier books seem like exercises to make sure that he got everything right when he finally wrote The Things They Carried. Needless to say, he did. Maybe my favorite book of all time.
A Rumor of War, by Philip Caputo — The classic firsthand account from several perspectives at once. In the early days of the war, the author served on the front lines as well as the rear; then returned in '75 as a journalist as Saigon fell. The book has all the immediacy of battle narrative, but with the benefit of introspection. Caputo asks difficult questions — of the reader, of himself, of the world.
Top 5 Road/Travel Narratives
On The Road, by Jack Kerouac — The end always echoed of Gatsby to me — in a good way; the best way:
So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty, I think of Dean Moriarty.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, by Hunter S. Thompson — About the '72 race to the White House, this is still one of the best books ever written about the political process.
Blue Highways, by William Least Heat Moon — As a heavy user of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, I'm a big fan of this pretty much straight-ahead road narrative, which I'd rank atop US book-length travelogues (though dozens have done brilliant shorter-form essays).
In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson — I have read a half a dozen of Bryson's books, and find him hilarious (in this era of cheap "LOL" this book, along with being informative, literally does make me laugh out loud). This account of Australia is my favorite, his funniest, and his best.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll — The literary equivalent of The Simpsons. Or the bible. Readable on different levels by different audiences able to tease out disparate messages and meanings from the text. Parents reading to kids, students stoned to all hell, academics arguing methods of reasoning. So infinitely good.
As the consumption marathon of the holidays roll around again, I thought I'd do my public service for the publishing industry, and run through some of my top fives lists. I'll forgo sliding into "Modern Jackass" territory (this week!) and stick to only the guilty pleasure genres that I actually read.
Buy them where you buy books.
Top 5 Sports Books (and I don't mean that in a betting sort of way)
The Game, by Ken Dryden — A classic, completely worthwhile read by a Hall of Fame goalie. Still the best (and smartest) hockey book out there.
Secretariat: The Making of a Champion, by William Nack — The Seabiscuit book is also excellent, nostalgic, and informative, but Bill Nack's book, thankfully, skips the early '70s history lesson, and instead focuses his glass on everything you need to know to love and respect the subject at hand as much as he clearly did. Read a chunk here.
Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby — The best look into the psychology of what it means to be a sports fan by someone who actually knows.
The Sweet Science, by A.J. Liebling — I have always loved boxing, and Liebling's book is the best of the boxing books. Culled from his New Yorker essays during the golden era (he wrote for the magazine from the mid '30s till the early '60s).
Ball Four, by Jim Bouton — Because you've gotta have a baseball book on the list. Maybe the first of the real behind-the-scenes tell-all books, but much more than that. It describes honestly the life of a major leaguer better than any other.
Top 5 Books for Non-Required Reading (think non-fiction as NPR story)
Take the Cannoli, by Sarah Vowell — Thoughtful, informative, witty; just excellent. I wish I wrote the title essay in particular. Her best in my book.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris — All of Sedaris's books are good, but this is his strongest, most mature, and evocative work. Also, it contains the essay "Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?" which made me nearly pee my pants laughing.
Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, by Peter Guralnick — Great look at Elvis's early years.
The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History, by Jonathan Franzen — Parts had me tittering to myself in bed while my wife looked at me like I was a crazy man. So well written, it even made Franzen's penchant for bird-watching seem fascinating.
And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, by Wayne Curtis — Exactly as the subtitle says; a well done, readable look at U.S. history through its most enduring booze. I'm thirsty just thinking about it.
Top 5 Disaster/Adventure Narratives (read in the warm, dry comfort of one's home)
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer — Before it was properly published as a book, this came out in large chunks in the Sunday Boston Globe. I read each section intently, and at the end of each, craved the next. An honest accounting of a wretched tragedy in which bad judgment and heroism played equal parts.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick — Melville didn't exactly dream up Moby Dick, he lifted history, and this tale makes Ahab look like a sap. Death and survival at sea, replete with life boats and necessary cannibalism.
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea, by Sebastian Junger — Before this book was made into a disappointingly mediocre flick starring George Clooney and Marky Mark, it was an excellent and fascinating book, in which I learned as much about meteorology, oceanography, and the commercial fishing industry as I did about simply they that go down to the sea in ships.
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, by Mark Bowden — The story of the 1993 special ops tragedy in Mogadishu in amazingly–well-researched detail. Provides an interesting window into Clinton administration foreign policy, and an operational analysis of how terrorist groups can wreak havoc in urban settings.
The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition, by Caroline Alexander — You'd be hard-pressed to find a more epic disaster (besides, perhaps, the whaleship Essex) than Shackleton's expedition to the South Pole. Inspiring and awesome feats of seamanship and heroism.
Baseball games that matter
After an interminably long season, finally, we are reminded what makes this sport great; what makes Ken Burns, and Bob Costas, and — admit it, you — weepy. The moments, the strategy, the splendor, the history, the national pastime: small-ball; Dave Roberts' steal, the bloody sock, taking four straight from the Yankees; the cold; the midges in Cleveland. The epic walk-offs.
And if your team is not playing baseball in October, there's always October hockey.
Leaves
Yes, the foliage, the color. The Crayola oranges and yellows, ambers and rubies; sure. But the smell of fall is what gets me. And the smell is of the turning leaves as they drop from the trees, as they dry up and crunch under foot, as they are raked into piles. And, of course, as those piles are dispersed by ecstatic toddlers.
The smell of leaves is the smell of outdoors. The smell of life itself.
New beginnings
Sure, spring has the greenery and the seedlings and the rebirth of Jesus and all that. But I was born right in the wheelhouse of fall, and I spent no less than 20 years going to school, and taught for another five, so my internal clock — and most everyone's — is well-honed to the yearly start of a new schedule each September.
Had the same job for nearly 10 years, like me? So find your new beginnings where you can — like on cable TV.
Cooking
We don't have central air conditioning in our house, so we do very little stovetop cooking during the heat of summer, and none in the oven. When fall rolls around, we fire it up once again and put on pots of slow cooked soups and stews and chilis, sauces and braises; put together some butternut squash or pumpkin ravioli; crank up the oven to max and make pizza.
We begin, once again, to cook and eat like we mean it. Oh, indeed.
Sleeping
Summer is great for shorts and flip-flops, but it sucks for sleeping. You're either too hot without the air conditioning on, or too cold with it on. Fall marks the return to cold noses, warm covers, and easy funching.
In New England, there's a saying: "Stick to your flannels till your flannels stick to you." Truer words were never spoken. The first night with the flannel sheets on the bed is like sleeping with a warm cup of coffee.
If you set out to write lyrics to start off a punk record, you could scarcely do better than Patti Smith on Horses:
"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine..."
Her snarl is nuanced and a bit understated, but there is no mistaking that she is not a chick to be trifled with. Along with Bruce Springsteen's classic first line of Thunder Road, "The screen door slams, Mary's dress sways..." it is my favorite album opening of all time. And one of my top five punk records. Hands down.
The criteria here is not how influential the record is or was (yes, I have old Stooges albums, but I don't actually listen to them) nor how great a particular song off it might be, it's how the thing holds together as a record, and how it holds up ~30 years later.
Patti Smith's Horses does both. It's a piece of something big, and a bit of a commitment, in the way that Coltrane's Love Supreme is. It pulls you in, asks that you stick with it, and pays you off in the end. And if it had never been released, it would still sound as new today as it did in 1975.
I've written before about the excellence of Minor Threat's classic first EP. No need to rehash that. It certainly rates among the top five punk records on most anyone's list. Mine included.
And I've shouted my love for Joe Strummer on these pages as well. Particularly, for The Clash's London Calling — a seminal record of my frustrated high school years. And an easy top five pick.
We've gotta have a Ramones record in there, and their eponymously-titled debut is it. Musically, it's a near tie with End of the Century, but the debut has more gravitas and attitude. Released in 1976, it rocks like few do, opening up with the blistering "Blitzkreig Bop." And it introduces all the now-familiar Ramones themes: three-chord songs, brilliantly sophomoric lyrics, retooled rock and roll oldies. Trashy, loud, garage-y, punk-y, yet still poppy enough that your kids or your parents can dig it.
And so we come to both the final album and the starting point of this exercise. Jim Carroll died last week ("I salute you, brother!"). When I found out, I posted to Facebook that The Jim Carroll Band's Catholic Boy was one of my top five punk albums of all time. It was a knee-jerk reaction, and I later started wondering if I really believed it to be true. I do. Any day.
It's an outstanding album. I ripped it to my computer the other day. In this age of digitizing music, one has the option to upload only the songs one deems worthy of disc space. With Catholic Boy, there is no filler. Of the 10 songs, I would rate 8 as being excellent, and two or three as being outstanding. It's still a fantastic album. Attitude, lyrical and sonic goodness, grit, Carroll's cool phrasing.
There they are — my top five.
P.S. If you want to argue that any of these are not punk enough for you, fine, no worries — trade out one of them for the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks... A bloody mess, but no one had more attitude than the Pistols. And despite themselves, they managed to record some excellent tunes.
Patti Smith — Gloria
Ramones — Listen to My Heart
The Jim Carroll Band — Three Sisters
